[[File:Mausoleumwhilhelm.JPG|thumb|Wilhelm II's tomb in Doorn, Netherlands]]
Wilhelm died of a [[pulmonary embolism|pulmonary embolus]] in Doorn, Netherlands, on 3 June 1941, aged 82, just weeks before the [[Operation Barbarossa|GermanAxis invasion of the Soviet Union]]. German soldiers had been guarding his house. Hitler, however, was reported {{By whom|date=November 2015}}to be angry that the former monarch had an honor guard of German troops and nearly fired the general who ordered them when he found out. Despite his personal animosity toward Wilhelm, Hitler wanted to bring his body back to Berlin for a state funeral, as Wilhelm was a symbol of Germany and Germans during the previous World War. Hitler felt that such a funeral would demonstrate to the Germans the direct descent of the [[Third Reich]] from the old [[German Empire]].{{Sfn | Sweetman | 1973 | pp = 654–55}} However, Wilhelm's wishes never to return to Germany until the restoration of the monarchy were respected, and the Nazi occupation authorities granted him a small military funeral, with a few hundred people present. The mourners included [[August von Mackensen]], fully dressed in his old imperial Life Hussars uniform, Admiral [[Wilhelm Canaris]], and ''Reichskommissar'' for the Netherlands [[Arthur Seyss-Inquart]], along with a few other military advisers. However, Wilhelm's request that the [[swastika]] and other Nazi regalia be not displayed at his funeral was ignored, and they are featured in the photographs of the event taken by a Dutch photographer.{{Sfn | Macdonogh | 2001 | p = 459}}
Wilhelm was buried in a mausoleum in the grounds of Huis Doorn, which has since become a place of pilgrimage for German monarchists. Small but enthusiastic and faithful numbers of them gather there every year on the anniversary of his death to pay their homage to the last German Emperor.{{Sfn | Ruggenberg | 1998}}
